Achi news desk-
The Venice Biennale, which runs this year between April 20 and November 24, is one of the world’s most prestigious international art shows. It is also held alongside the Documenta in the city of Kassel in Germany.
The lagoon city will once again become the center of the international art world in the coming weeks and months. Over 800,000 art lovers made a pilgrimage to the previous Biennale held two years ago, and two thirds came from abroad, a new record.
Israel Pavilion to remain closed in protest
The Israel-Hamas war has a direct impact on the prestigious art show.
A collection of pro-Palestinian activists, the “Art Not Hilocide Alliance” or ANGA for short, had been calling for Israel’s exclusion from this year’s Biennale amid the conflict.
In an open letter, the activists criticized Israel for its military action in the Gaza Strip – which the group calls “genocide” against the Palestinians.
The open letter condemns the “double standards” of the organizers of the Biennale, stating that they remained silent on the situation in the Middle East while they had condemned Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine two years earlier. According to the alliance, more than 23,750 people have signed the call so far, including US photographer Nan Goldin.
The Biennale rejected the calls for a boycott. The curators had already decided on the concept and participants of the Biennale’s central exhibition long before the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack that prompted Israeli retaliation in the Gaza Strip.
But now the doors to Israel’s pavilion will remain closed anyway. The exhibition’s featured artist, Ruth Patir, an Israeli born in New York in 1984, announced in a statement on Tuesday that the show will only open “when the fire and hostage release agreement is concluded.”
“The decision of the artist and the curators is not to cancel themselves or the exhibition; instead, they choose to take a stand in solidarity with the families of the hostages and the larger community in Israel who are calling for change,” adds the statement on the Patir website.
Patir’s exhibition, “M/otherLand,” includes a video installation of ancient museum figurines representing “broken women” who “come alive and participate in a procession, in a shared public expression of grief, sadness and rage. The point of view of the camera is the point of view of someone watching or witnessing the scene, thereby claiming a subjective, embodied point of view of world events.”
Israel has had its own national pavilion in Venice since 1950.
Russian pavilion to remain empty again
Meanwhile, the Russian pavilion will once again remain empty.
The Biennale did not officially ban Russia, but after the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the artists and curators chosen for the Russian pavilion resigned from participating under the national flag.
Ukraine is participating through a group exhibition called “Making a Net.”
‘Foreigners everywhere’
Entitled “Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere,” the main exhibition is curated by the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, who becomes the first artistic director of the Venice Art Biennale born and based in the Global South – wide The artistic director’s aim is to show art from the less privileged and less industrialized regions of the Global South.
“Pedrosa’s main focus is therefore artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, exiles, exiles, émigrés, exiles or refugees,” he said in a statement. The exhibition stretches across the Giardini park, the historic shipyard halls known as the Arsenale and other art venues in the lagoon city.
The slogan itself is inspired by the work of a collective of artists from Paris called Claire Fontaine, who had created different versions of the neon sign in 53 different languages. They now light up the Arsenale.
The international art show features 330 artists, with 88 countries presenting their own exhibitions. Most of them show their works in the Arsenale, without their own exhibition hall.
This year, four countries will take part for the first time in the event in Venice: Benin, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Timor Leste. Nicaragua, Panama and Senegal will also participate with their own national pavilions for the first time.
African Voices in the Art Biennale
The African continent, in particular, has been strengthening its presence in the world’s oldest art show. Ghana and Madagascar participated for the first time in 2019; Uganda, Cameroon and Namibia followed in 2022.
Based on the theme “Everything Precious Is Fragile,” the Benin pavilion features the work of artists Chloe Quenum, Moufouli Bello, Ishola Akpo and Romuald Hazoume. It is organized by Nigerian curator and critic, Azu Nwagbogu, who is also the founder and director of the Lagos Photo Festival and the African Artists Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of contemporary African art worldwide.
Among the organization’s success stories is Romuald Hazoume. The Yoruba artist and sculptor, now 62 years old, had already gained acclaim by participating in Documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007, where he presented an impressive installation commenting on flight, expulsion and loss of home.
Through the Benin pavilion, the curator Nwagbogu also wants to ignite a new perspective on the decolonization of art, he told journalists before the exhibition. Beyond the restoration of objects, he also wants to promote “recovery of information.” With the help of a “library of resistance,” it seeks to give women a voice on topics such as African identity, ecology and science.
Does he feel that African voices are adequately represented in Venice? “I would like to see a lot more,” Nwagbogu told DW. “More importantly, I would like to see more deep cultural infrastructure built and supported on the [European] continent and more support for those impressive events we have already built across Africa.”
Germany’s multicultural approach
Among the 28 permanent country pavilions in the Giardini Park, the program of the German pavilion opens with a presentation by Berlin-based theater director Ersan Mondtag and Israeli artist Yael Bartana.
Under the title “Thresholds,” they offer an exploration of the past and the future inspired by various artistic concepts. The curator this year, after Yilmaz Dziewior in 2022, is the Istanbul-born architect and co-director of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Cagla Ilk. Referring to the show’s title, he explained on the threshold, “Nothing is certain.”
The Pope was waiting at the event
The Vatican offers one of the shows that draw attention this year: It places its pavilion in the prison for women in Venice. Prisoners accompany visitors on an art itinerary through the prison.
Pope Francis also wants to visit the pavilion. He would be the first pontiff to date to visit the Venice Biennale.
This article was originally written in German.
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